At least 27 killed in blast at illegal ‘rat hole’ coal mine in India

At least 27 miners were killed after an explosion tore through an unauthorised coal mine in India's northeastern state of Meghalaya.

The blast took place at around 10am on Thursday local time in a "rat-hole" mine in the East Jaintia Hills district, the district's deputy commissioner Manish Kumar said. Several others were still missing on Saturday, the police said, according to reports.

Local police were on the scene and have been conducting rescue operations, but attempts to reach the miners have been suspended due to a lack of equipment, the deputy commissioner said.

Rescue work was hampered because of the remote location of the mine, Mr Kumar said, adding that it would take several hours of driving off-road for state and federal rescue workers to reach the spot and resume search and rescue operations.

The blast, which ripped through the mine’s interior, is suspected to have been caused by dynamite, police said.

"The government of Meghalaya has ordered a comprehensive inquiry into the incident. Accountability will be fixed, and those responsible will face strict legal action," Meghalaya's chief minister Conrad Sangma said in a post on X.

Locals who said they had spoken to the miners in recent days, told reporters that most of those killed were from the neighbouring state of Assam. Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam, said: "If this is established, we will extend all possible assistance and support to the affected families from Assam."

Prime minister Narendra Modi has announced financial assistance of Rs200,000 ( £1,636) for the family of each victim and Rs 50,000 (£405)rupees for the injured.

In India’s east and northeast regions, workers extract coal in hazardous conditions in small mines that are narrow pits in the ground, usually meant for one person to go down. "Rat-hole miners" are experts trained to work in extremely narrow, often hand-dug tunnels resembling rat burrows. The rat-hole mines were banned in 2014 because of the large number of fatalities and the damage caused to the environment.

The coal is usually placed in boxes that are hoisted to the surface with pulleys. In some cases, miners carry coal in baskets up on wooden slats flanking the walls of the mines.

A total of 63 people have died during illegal rat-hole mining in the north-eastern states of Assam and Meghalaya since 2012, according to a federal government estimate. At least 15 miners were killed after getting trapped in one such mine in Meghalaya state in 2018.

The mining technique had proven instrumental in rescuing 41 workers trapped inside a collapsed tunnel in the Himalayas in 2023.